


For the Girl Who Didn't Grow Up

by speedboat



Series: Studies [4]
Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 18:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3660249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speedboat/pseuds/speedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendla is a quiet brand of beauty, ethereal in her average. She will not grow up on anyone's terms but her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Girl Who Didn't Grow Up

Wendla is a quiet brand of beauty, ethereal in her average. Her hair is just the right shade between brown and black, box braids swinging to her mid-back; her eyes wide and brown. She loves the seaside; Martha has seen her run into the water in a desperate grab for a shell, clamping her fist around it even as a wave pulled her into the ocean. She remembers Hanschen grumbling as he fetched a towel to wrap around her shivering form, still clutching the pink conch shell she'd originally laid eyes on. Wendla is relentlessly childish, a symptom, Martha speculates, of the early pregnancy. She will not grow up on anyone's terms but her own, choosing to eat KD in footie pajamas on the nights in. Her favorite color is an artificial, Barbie pink that she insists is called "deep rose."

She stumbled into med school, not driven to it since birth like most of her classmates. She'd gone to uni in the first place only because the therapist had said that it might help her to live as a normal kid after the abortion. Martha suspects her father wanted an art student, maybe an English major who could make a lawyer very happy one day. Instead, he got a daughter that pored over her biology textbook from sixth form, studying relentlessly until she was the pet of her surgical resident. She wants to help girls, she says, quiet one night during a sleepover at Ilse and Martha's. She wants to make sure they know. She applies sunscreen compulsively. She can sing, not with particular range or ability, but quietly, a lullaby, almost. She smells like coconut.

Wendla is a master at silence. She is smart without needing to say so. Georg once said, infamously, that her ears were "incomparable." She looks right into your eyes when she talks to you. She seems as though she has never, not even once been afraid.

Martha doesn't mention and Wendla doesn't bring up that one night in sixth form, a month before graduation. The six pack of beer. The smell of Martha's shampoo mixing with Wendla's, sweet and mellow in its own way. That one kiss, and the way Wendla wrenched away after. Martha's eyes on the floor, Wendla's gaze soft and sad in a way that painted Martha with shame.

So maybe Martha is in love with her. So what?

Wendla is a master at silence. What needs to be said is done.


End file.
